Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill
Lord Kennedy of Southwark Excerpts(13 years, 3 months ago)
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“( ) of all representations received in writing or any electronic format made to a Boundary Commission, by publishing item online within 72 hours of receipt”
Lord Kennedy of Southwark
This amendment is similar to the one that I moved in Committee. The amendment in Committee required that all representations received should be published online within 24 hours; this amendment requires that they should be published online within 72 hours—three days—of receipt.
After listening to the Minister, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace of Tankerness, I withdrew my amendment in Committee. However, what the Government have come back with is disappointing, because representations will be published only after the close of the consultation period. Although I accept that the majority of representations will be received towards the end of the consultation process, under the Government’s proposals representations could be received more than three months before they are made public. That is not good and, quite frankly, I had hoped for a little more. I also cannot find any requirement for the Boundary Commission to publish—
Baroness Anelay of St Johns
My Lords, I hesitate to interrupt the noble Lord when he is so carefully introducing his amendment. I know that the House wishes to listen to him. Therefore, I invite noble Lords who are leaving the crowded Chamber to do so quietly so that we may have the full benefit of listening to the noble Lord.
Lord Kennedy of Southwark
I thank the noble Baroness for that. I cannot find any requirement for the Boundary Commission to publish representations received in any secondary consultation. If I am wrong in that, I hope that it will be pointed out to me. Finally, my amendment is green, makes sense and would save trees.
The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster (Lord Strathclyde)
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord for moving his amendment and for again raising this issue, which was discussed in Committee. The Government support the idea of a good flow of information between the Boundary Commission and the public so that people can be informed about the review and have their say. The noble Lord has kindly amended his original proposal to allow 72 hours for publication. However, this is still likely to be impractical given the tendency that we have noted of people to respond to consultations just before the end of the consultation period. The Boundary Commission will no doubt publish representations as speedily as possible, but a deadline of 72 hours may be too stringent, particularly in cases where it has to deal with significant numbers of representations in paper form, which will have to be converted to an electronic version for publication.
Amendment 27G provides for a further consultation period of four weeks to comment on representations made to the Boundary Commission, which the commission shall be required to publish before that four-week period starts. I hope that that is a full explanation of how we hope to deal with the points raised by the noble Lord’s amendment.
Lord Grocott
My Lords, I can make my remarks in two minutes. I have had the enormous privilege of serving not only this House but two different parliamentary constituencies. In one the electorate was 100,000, in the other it was just under 60,000 when I retired. I simply report the situation to the House as accurately and genuinely as I can. Anyone who thinks there is no difference whatever in the level of service that you can give as a Member of Parliament when you are representing 100,000 people compared with 60,000 ought to try providing that service. I have tried to provide it. I say that with feeling because part of the overall justification that has been given for the various constitutional changes with which we will have to deal is that they will reconnect Parliament with the people. I seem to recall Nick Clegg using that phrase. I do not know how on earth you can reconnect Parliament with the people when you have bigger parliamentary constituencies. The noble Lord, Lord Renton, is right to say that staff can help with some of this work, but I would find it deeply depressing if we ended up with a House of Commons that was rather like the House of Representatives in the United States, where you do not see the representative but rather a member of his or her staff. The personal connection that we have in this country is so different from the position in many other countries. That is why I am always so wary of these comparisons.
I think that I have spoken for two minutes but I shall speak for one more. One of the things that make some of us so resistant to the raft of changes being proposed is the great opposition that exists to them. I know that as a matter of reportage. This is a friendless Bill. If there is any uncertainty about that on the government Front Benches, they should try offering a free vote on these issues in the Commons. I have never known so many Conservative MPs—I have not heard a Liberal say this yet, but perhaps one will—telling us to keep up the debate. It is dawning on them that the number of MPs will be reduced, that fights will break out between constituencies and neighbours, and that that is guaranteed to happen every five years. I was going to say that the light is dawning, but I think that it has dawned. Perhaps it is worth the Government checking that out. I may be wrong about the view of Conservative and Liberal Democrat MPs—people over the other side of the Chamber have more experience in that regard than I have—but why do the Government not do a little check behind the scenes first and then demonstrate publicly that this huge constitutional change represents the will of the House of Commons and the House of Lords, and they can prove it because they have given a free vote to the Members?
Lord Kennedy of Southwark
My Lords, I wish to make it clear to the House that I shall not move my Amendment 18G in this group in favour of the amendments tabled by my noble and learned friend Lord Falconer of Thoroton and my noble friend Lord Foulkes of Cumnock.
Lord Strathclyde
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord for that clarification. The noble Lord, Lord Grocott, as a former government Chief Whip, espouses the free vote. On the whole I agree with him, but not all the time; in fact, probably not most of the time and probably not on this Bill. The noble Lord said that I should demonstrate publicly why we are doing these things and I shall try to do that. Noble Lords opposite came forward with what I thought were entirely rational arguments. However, I will try to demonstrate that, however rational they were, they start from a false premise. I will not say to the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes of Cumnock, that his amendment is defective. I do not know whether it is or not. It is of no interest to me whether it is defective or not. I know what he was trying to achieve and I accept that he had limited time to get it right, and so I think it is unnecessary to say that. I greatly admire the quality of the research done by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer of Thoroton. He went all the way back to 2003 and found a quotation from the Prime Minister himself, saying something that he would no doubt now regret. That shows just how far he has come over the past few years.
A number of amendments have been tabled to change the number of constituencies required by the Bill to more than 600. We discussed this issue at length on the ninth day of Committee, and I can understand why. I shall set out the Government’s thinking for today’s debate and explain why we are clear that there is a case for making what we consider to be a modest reduction in the size of the House. First, our proposal simply aims to end the upward pressure on the number of MPs and to make a modest reduction in the overall number. With the exception of the review after the creation of the Scottish Parliament, which took effect in 2005, all other boundary reviews since 1950 have seen an increase of between four and 15 seats. The fourth and fifth reviews of the Boundary Commission for England noted that the rules are currently drafted in the Parliamentary Constituencies Act 1986, which contributed to this problem. The fifth general review laid out the details of the issue and noted:
“We illustrate, in paragraph 2.11, how the consequence of the interplay of the existing Rules, other than Rule 1, is a tendency for an ever increasing allocation of constituencies in England in future reviews. This could be changed if the Rules were altered”.
The Boundary Commissions have no formal role in advising on the rules that they must apply. However, as the bodies which have extensive experience of the practical result of applying these rules, their views are clearly important. The changes proposed in this Bill will address those concerns, a point underlined by the British Academy which notes that the revised rules were a very substantial improvement on those currently implemented by the Boundary Commissions, have a clear hierarchy and are not contradictory.
Secondly, making a modest reduction in the overall number of MPs will allow a saving to the public purse. We feel that it is right to lead by example at a time when the whole of the public sector is being asked to make savings. We estimate that reducing the size of the other place will save £12.2 million annually, made up of a reduced salary cost of £4.1 million and £8.1 million in reduced expenditure on MPs’ expenses. I shall turn in a moment to the increased workload raised by many noble Lords. The fundamental point here is that at a time when the whole public sector is being asked to do more with less, this is a relatively modest saving but one which we think is worth making. There is no reason why MPs and the House of Commons should not be more efficient. These amendments would wipe out any prospect of reducing the cost of politics, while we believe that we should lead by example.
Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill
Lord Kennedy of Southwark Excerpts(13 years, 3 months ago)
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Lord Soley
My Lords, I shall be brief, but I want to raise an issue that has troubled me in the past.
The noble Lord will see that the form for a postal vote—form 2—is prescribed on pages 60 and 61 of the Bill. I should say that he might need some advice from his civil servants because I have never had a clear answer to this question. The form requires the person who wants to use a postal vote to fill in the boxes set out in the form. After the individual has filled in their date of birth in one place, a box is provided for the voter’s signature. Next to that box, it says:
“(voter’s signature) IMPORTANT—Keep signature within border”.
That has always troubled me because many people who vote by post are actually old and infirm, and I have never been quite sure what happens if their signature goes outside the box.
In a sense this is not a minor point because I wonder whether that means that the vote may not be counted, which is what happens if you make other mistakes or put wrong entries on the form, or whether it simply means that the signature may not be able to be read by electronic means. I have always assumed that the reason for keeping the signature within the box is so that it can be read electronically. That might not be right, so if it is not, I am not sure why it is so important for the signature to be kept within the border.
I emphasise the point because I am thinking of the comments made earlier by the noble Lord, Lord Low. I know that you can get a dispensation for this and you do not have to vote this way, but for elderly and infirm people, or for those whose vision is not as good as it was, there is a real problem about staying within the box—indeed, I have been known to stray outside the box once or twice in my career, but not too often.
Again, I know that the Minister may have to take advice on this, but what happens if a voter filling in a form for a postal vote does not keep the signature within the parameters of the box? Is the problem simply that the signature cannot be read electronically but the vote will still be counted because someone will read it manually, or does it mean that the vote will not be counted? Obviously this question does not just apply to this form, but to others as well.
Lord Kennedy of Southwark
My Lords, I agree strongly with the comments made by my noble friend Lord Campbell-Savours. While it may not be appropriate to deal with the issue in this Bill, the provision of an adequate number of polling stations ought to be of great concern to the Government. I am lucky because the polling station is in the street where I live, but that is not the case for a lot of people, who have to travel many miles to get to their polling station. The Government ought to look at that problem. At some point in the future—obviously not now—there is a case for a proper revision of electoral law in this country so that it can be brought together for the production of some sort of consolidated Bill.
Baroness Liddell of Coatdyke
My Lords, I speak in the debate on whether Schedule 2 should stand part of the Bill not from a passionate objection to anything in the schedule but as a means of impressing on the Leader of the House the importance of these paragraphs. This is the bit where we should be able to transcend party politics. This has been a closely fought part of our legislative process, but at the end of the day the reality is that, for the referendum to have real value and merit in the development of our constitution, people need to feel confident that it has been conducted in such a manner, and the rules of the legislation have been applied in such a way, that they can relax not only from a partisan point of view but from a citizen’s point of view. I urge the Leader of the House, who is a reasonable man, to look at these issues as someone who just wants a proper result for the referendum.
There is a strong case for all the parties represented in this House to get together to discuss these nuts-and-bolts issues. I remember with some pain Scotland’s 1979 referendum, which is an experience that I would not wish to repeat. Earlier I spoke to the noble Lord, Lord McCluskey—who, sadly, is not in his place at the moment—who was talking about some of the pressures that he experienced as a Minister in the Government at that time when looking at how the referendum should be run. There are no two ways about it: there will be huge divisions in every party. That means that the parties must be confident in the structures that exist.
Lord Kennedy of Southwark
My Lords, I am a bit surprised by the comments from the noble Lord, Lord Tyler. I have a list here that I got from the Printed Paper Office. Even by my calculations, we have actually got through a majority of the groups for today. I understand that we will finish this Committee stage tomorrow and I cannot see any problem with that whatever. Secondly, on the question of schools, although I heard the comments from my noble friend Lord Myners, we should be looking to get out of using schools as polling stations completely, if we possibly can. That would avoid children losing a day in school.
Lord Grocott
My Lords, there is one problem with this schedule, which I want to refer to briefly. I am sure that it will make us wonder, in the light of us looking at it in some detail, whether there perhaps should have been one or two amendments, as the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, said, I think wrongly, that there had been no discussions on this schedule at all.
The real problem with this schedule is that we can sense in it that the parliamentary draftsmen—whom I do not blame, as it is a very difficult job—think that it is about the procedure relating to any election. The whole point is that this is not any election. It is fundamentally different, so far as the voter going into the polling booth is concerned, from all the elections that he or she is familiar with, where they know that there will be names there and have, obviously, put their cross by the favoured candidate. However, this is about asking a question and it will not do, for a number of reasons, simply to lift huge chunks that are clearly from existing legislation—I do not blame the draftsmen, as I have said—about the conduct of elections, thinking, “Well, we can just lift this and stick it in and this will be okay for a referendum to change the constitution”.
I shall give one example. I do not know the answer to it but it is quite significant. A relatively small part of this schedule has the totally innocuous information about the,
“appointment of presiding officers and clerks”.
We all know the job of a clerk in a polling station, but I submit to the Committee that in a referendum on changing the voting system, that clerk is likely to be presented with difficulties that clerks in polling stations simply do not face. The elector will go in, thinking that he or she is voting principally for a local government candidate. Certainly, in the areas that I am familiar with, it is on who should be their local councillor. They will then be presented with a second ballot paper which will ask the question:
“At present, the UK uses the ‘first past the post’ system to elect MPs to the House of Commons. Should the ‘alternative vote’ system be used instead?”.
I put it to the Committee that many people will be going into a polling station for the first time. I am not patronising people or saying the electorate do not understand these systems, I am simply making the straightforward point that the change in the electoral system to the alternative vote system is not high on people’s radar, as we all know from our own experience. I would be very surprised indeed if no more than one elector then left the cubicle where they were about to vote and asked the clerk who distributed the ballot papers what they were being asked to vote on. That is perfectly plausible and indeed an almost inevitable consequence of what is happening.
I asked the question—I do not know the answer—whether it is within the law for the clerk to give advice to the would-be voter about what the alternative vote system is. I assume it probably cannot be because presumably I could be a clerk if I applied to be one and I know what I would tell them about the alternative vote system. So presumably it would be completely out of order for clerks to give advice in that way. If that is the case and a confused elector goes to the clerk on desk and says, “I am puzzled about this second ballot paper, I understand the first one”, at the very least I would suggest that in the appointment of clerks and counting officers on page 33 a script should be offered to them out of courtesy. They would need to know what to say to someone who came to them with that question.
I doubt whether the Leader of the House when he sums up will have given any thought to this as it is only a small part of the Bill but it illustrates the point that you simply cannot lift the rules that apply to every other kind of election and apply them to this most fundamentally important election of changing the way we vote and thereby changing our constitution. So please can we be told whether there is any law relating to what clerks can do when faced with this question? If there is not, should there be or, at the very least, should there be guidance as to what should happen in the polling station when this kind of eventuality arises?
Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill
Lord Kennedy of Southwark Excerpts(13 years, 3 months ago)
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Lord Snape
Yes, I noticed that the noble Lord lost his seat in Northampton South at one stage as well; I do not say that that was anything to do with the fact that he had three local authorities to deal with, but he would at least acknowledge, I hope, that the resources necessary to deal with three different local authorities are considerably greater than those needed to deal with just one. I am sure, given his reputation for hard work, that he found dealing with three local authorities completely effortless. Those of us who did not perhaps possess his stamina or his drive felt it was pretty exhausting dealing with one, let alone two or three. I am sure that the noble Lord would accept at least some part of what I say; it is easier to deal with just one local authority.
Again I refer noble Lords to what the report from the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee had to say about this particular aspect of the Bill and that covered by this particular amendment.
Lord Kennedy of Southwark
I think I am right to recall that the boundary review for the seat for Northampton South took place a few years ago and that now it is wholly coterminous with the actual town of Northampton; the other area is not there any more.
Lord Snape
I suspect that the Boundary Commission, having noted the elevation of the former Member to your Lordships’ House, felt that no one else could possibly follow in his footsteps and therefore made sure that the constituency was coterminous with the local authority.
Lord Snape
Amendment 71 refers to three local authorities, I think. I have been aware of some of the difficulties, but I must not detain the House for longer than necessary.
The Political and Constitutional Reform Committee had this to say so far as local and district councils are concerned:
“Another practical effect of the 5% equalisation requirement is that many more constituencies than at present would cross local authority boundaries. The numbers involved will vary across the UK: Scotland is likely to see 15-20 (out of 50) cross-local government border constituencies, Wales between 23 and 28 constituencies (of 30), and in England, where 34 constituencies already cross a London borough boundary, the commissions ‘expect to cross boundaries to an even greater extent in a review carried out under the terms of the Bill.’ The Secretaries to the English and Scottish Commissions, Bob Farrance and Hugh Bucanan, told us they intend to take local authority areas into account when designing constituencies. In Wales very few constituencies will be able to follow local authority boundaries”.
We need constituencies that have some affinity. Drawing lines on maps, as has been pointed out in these debates, does not a community make; crossing local authority boundaries is something that the Boundary Commission for many years has done its best to avoid.
The committee went on to say:
“Another consequence of the 5% equalisation requirement is that the boundary commissions will have to split wards in order to achieve the required number of electors in each constituency … Professor Ron Johnston told us that research suggested that political activity declined when wards were divided”.
I have no wish to offend the noble Lord, Lord Grenfell, by talking about political activity, but the party unit of government in my own party—once the ward and now the branch—is normally based on a local government ward. If you split that ward then obviously political activity in that particular area is likely to be considerably affected. That might not bother noble Lords on either side of the House, but all three major parties depend on active volunteers, and what gets volunteers actively involved in a political party is a sense of community that I fear will be lost unless some of these amendments are accepted.
This the fourth or fifth time I have spoken on this legislation. I hope that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace, who is to reply, will acknowledge that on no occasion have I spoken for longer than 15 minutes. These amendments are important. The only real debate that took place was on the 5 per cent quota, not on the details that I have outlined in these amendments—and there is a whole group of them. I say again to noble Lords that if we had really been anxious to be difficult, we would have debated all the amendments separately. These are important matters. I hope that when the Minister replies he will bear it in mind that we are talking about communities as well as political parties, and that he will look seriously at these amendments. I beg to move.
Lord Kennedy of Southwark
My Lords, I support the amendment in the name of my noble friend Lord Snape. Counties are the starting point of any boundary review. They are not the building blocks; wards are the building blocks. Those of us who have been involved in boundary reviews in various capacities will know that. I would include among that group myself, the noble Lord, Lord Bach, and many noble Lords on all sides of the House who have served in the other place. They will know that counties are the starting point. Outside London, you always start with a county—it can be a shire county or a metropolitan county. You are advised of the number of seats in that county and the initial recommendations of the Boundary Commissions are published.
I recall my time working in the east Midlands, when Derbyshire received an extra seat. That came into force at the last general election and the constituency was called Mid Derbyshire. This was because the electorate had increased and the county qualified for a new seat. I was always clear that that would be a Conservative seat and in May last year it returned a Conservative MP. There were knock-on effects. The review resulted in High Peak becoming coterminous with the district council boundary. That was positive and sensible. A seat called Derbyshire Dales was created close to the boundaries of Derbyshire Dales District Council. The South Derbyshire constituency became coterminous with the boundary of the district council; previously, it had contained a couple of wards in the City of Derby.
There are of course seats all across the county that cross different district boundaries, but all are contained within the county. The county is compact; it provides historic identity and people understand it. Take away those county boundaries and what do we risk? In Derbyshire, bits of High Peak would go into Greater Manchester. North East Derbyshire would be put together with Sheffield, while seats that are largely based on the towns and districts of Erewash and Amber Valley would be ripped up. The historic A52, which was recently named Brian Clough Way, in recognition of what Brian Clough brought to Nottingham and Derby, was put in a Leicestershire seat. It is wrong to ignore these boundaries. Greater London is a county and is allocated a number of seats. It is true that in Greater London seats cross borough boundaries, but account is taken of that. That recognition would go under these proposals.
Seats and communities of course change and movements in boundaries should take account of those changes. However, the Government’s proposals are deeply flawed, as nothing else matters but the number of people, who are thereby denied their right to proper input. They will have the right to send in a letter but not to appeal to an inquiry. That is not right. It is most regrettable that the Government have not moved on these proposals, but I live in hope, given what we have heard from the Leader of the House this afternoon.
The names of seats are also important. This is sometimes forgotten, but boundary inquiries are a good forum for looking at them. The inquiries do not always get it right, but they can improve the situation. I grew up in Walworth in the London Borough of Southwark. When I joined the Labour Party in 1979, I found that I was in the Southwark Peckham CLP. I went to secondary school in Peckham, but calling the seat Southwark Peckham did not reflect the community. The proper name should have been Camberwell, Peckham and Walworth, which would have identified the three distinct communities in that constituency. I am pleased that in a subsequent review the seat was renamed Camberwell and Peckham, which better reflects the constituency, because most of Walworth has been included in Bermondsey and Old Southwark, although that name could be improved.
I bring my remarks to a close in the spirit that has been expressed on both Front Benches. I hope that a deal can be sorted out shortly.
Lord Dubs
My Lords, I support these amendments. Perhaps I may give an example of where even the Boundary Commission does not always get it right. The point is that there are, at present, ways of getting it right subsequently.
I had the privilege of representing the Battersea constituency. We had an anomalous situation on the Wandsworth/Lambeth border. My constituency was within Wandsworth. As noble Lords know, Wandsworth had a Conservative council and Lambeth, which adjoined it, had a Labour council. One council estate that belonged to Wandsworth was partly in Wandsworth and partly in Lambeth. That might not have been so bad in itself, except that Wandsworth’s policy was to have a low council tax and to charge pretty heavy rents to council tenants. Lambeth’s policy was to have a high council tax and to charge low rents to council tenants.
Think of the position of a block of flats in Lambeth in a Wandsworth-run council estate. The poor people living in the Lambeth bit of the estate had pulled two short straws. They had to pay the high council tax in Lambeth and the high rents charged by Wandsworth Council. They were caught both ways. Fortunately that situation was adjusted, but the anomaly of splitting a council estate in two by a constituency and, as it then was, a borough boundary is clearly nonsense. I only hope that such things will not happen again, which is why many of us are concerned that, if anomalies of this sort are built into the system, it will damage local communities, local people and the politics of the area.
Perhaps I may widen the argument away from that example. We have discussed representing a constituency that was in more than one local authority area. I would have found that pretty difficult. Many noble Lords have represented areas, either as local councillors or in Parliament. It is difficult to represent an area and deal with another local authority. It is possible under the present system that one might have to deal with another health authority. That is also difficult and I do not know what the future will be for the health service in that regard. For a Member of Parliament to be effective, it is surely important that the constituency should reflect the community, the local authority area and the way in which the health service operates. In that way, a Member of Parliament can be most effective.
Take the situation where one wants to achieve better co-operation between a health authority and the social services department of the local authority—co-operation that occasionally does not work too well. If a Member of Parliament is to be effective, he or she needs to be able to understand these relationships and, it is to be hoped, to have these bodies covering the same area. We used to call them coterminous boundaries.
The other important area is not just the community but the way in which a Member of Parliament relates to local voluntary groups in the community. These groups tend to relate to natural community boundaries. It is difficult to achieve an effective relationship with one’s constituents if the community groups do not cover an area similar to that of the constituency. I had another difficulty in Battersea, because part of the constituency was in Balham and the people of Balham did not like to be called residents of Battersea. We had to deal with that one, but it was all done within the local authority boundary, and it was a matter of just recognising that the community in Balham was different from the community in the northern part of Battersea.
I would like to feel that the Boundary Commission will be empowered by amendments to the Bill that take these matters into account. I honestly believe that the ideal situation is when a Member of Parliament represents one community within one local authority area, not two. That would make for the most effective relationship and the most effective work of the political parties and it would enhance democracy.
Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill
Lord Kennedy of Southwark Excerpts(13 years, 3 months ago)
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Lord Foulkes of Cumnock
They would certainly do it more effectively. However, that situation exists at the moment. The SNP, for example, is committed to the total separation of Scotland from the rest of the United Kingdom. It has said that if it held the balance of power in a hung Parliament, it would push hard on the interests of Scotland in particular. We are already facing that kind of situation, but of course it would be exacerbated.
I have been trying to draw my remarks to a close for some time.
Lord Kennedy of Southwark
I am most grateful to my noble friend for giving way. He has put a very interesting proposal to the House, but it is regrettable that we are discussing it at almost a quarter to three in the morning. If we had a Green Paper and White Paper that were properly subject to scrutiny, we would be able to explore it in a much more sensible way.
Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill
Lord Kennedy of Southwark Excerpts(13 years, 3 months ago)
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Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town
My Lords, I was going to rise before my noble friend but I am grateful that I did not as I want to make only one brief point. It is partly on what he was saying about the naming as well as the defining of the boundaries, because one of the things I am most concerned about is that so many boundaries will be changed that one of the big issues will be the naming of the new constituencies and therefore the time taken. This part of the Bill will bring in more consultation than is allowed for without boundary hearings but it will also be timed. I therefore support this amendment and I urge the Government to consider, when they look at the timing of this, that one of the most political issues, even after they have defined the boundaries, will be the naming of so many new constituencies. I urge caution on that as that is where, in the words of my noble friend, civil war will break out.
Lord Kennedy of Southwark
My Lords, in speaking to Amendment 55, moved by my noble friend Lord Lipsey, I am obviously happy that I will not speak to or move Amendment 56, which stands in my name. We are already in 2011 and the proposal in the Bill is that we are to have a report from the Boundary Commission in a little over two and a half years. That is just impractical. If we do not see some movement on this, we are creating the conditions whereby the Boundary Commission will find it almost impossible to have any sort of meaningful process with local residents, even under the limited proposals in the Bill.
Many years ago, I lived in Coventry—a great Midlands city—and I was involved in presenting evidence to the boundary inquiry in the early 1990s; I think it was in approximately 1993. That inquiry was triggered by proposals to reduce the number of parliamentary seats from four to three. At that time there were three Labour and one Conservative Members of Parliament. Going down from four seats to three meant that it was very unlikely, however you drew the boundaries, that the Conservatives would retain a seat in the city. In producing its recommendations, the Boundary Commission produced two seats in the north of the city. It had a Coventry North West seat and a Coventry North East seat. It put the Holbrooks ward from the north-west and the Longford ward, where I lived in the north-east, into the same constituency.
It made no difference to the outcome of a future election but the Boundary Commission, by drawing up its proposals back in its London office, had missed the Coventry-Nuneaton railway line and the A444 from junction 3 of the M6 into the city. I stress again to your Lordships that where those wards ended up made no difference to the actual outcome of the election, but it had completely missed that. We had a local inquiry; local residents, community groups, Members of Parliament, the parties and the local authorities all attended. The next day, the commissioner himself drove around the city, visiting the various points that had been mentioned by residents there. He saw the merits of the case argued by people and changed the proposals accordingly so that, even today, the Holbrooks ward remains in Coventry North West and the Longford ward remains in Coventry North East.
My point is that if the Government get rid of local inquiries and only allow less than two and a half years, as proposed in the Bill, for written submissions then such things will never be picked up. We will have constituencies created that have no basis in any sort of community ties and no relationship to local residents. I want to hear from the Minister whether the Government are prepared to risk that or are they prepared, as the amendment suggests, to give a longer time than they are proposing for the Boundary Commission to consider written proposals?
Lord Howarth of Newport
My Lords, there is no case at all for this process being rushed as the Government seek to insist that it should be. In the range of amendments so helpfully tabled by my noble friends, I personally prefer that in the name of my noble friend Lord Grocott, requiring that the Boundary Commission should report by 2017. The Government may argue, I suppose, that the case for insisting that the Boundary Commission makes its recommendations by 1 October 2013 is that it will hasten the great day when we have votes of equal value in this country, but if that is their argument it is a fallacious one. Equalising constituencies will not produce votes of equal value. Other factors will offset that effect. For example, differential turnout will mean that votes will be of different value in different constituencies. If you vote in a constituency where there is a 50 per cent turnout and someone else votes in one where there is a 60 per cent turnout and the margin of victory is the same, your vote in the 50 per cent turnout contest is a more significant one. Introducing the alternative vote will do nothing to alter the present state of affairs in which general elections are won or lost in the marginal seats. It will be the votes of swing voters in marginal seats that will continue to be intensively wooed by campaigning parties and candidates, and those votes will have a quite disproportionate effect on the electoral outcome.